


On the Naming of Orphans

by shakespeareaddict



Category: Cats - Andrew Lloyd Webber
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Pre-Canon, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3522020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespeareaddict/pseuds/shakespeareaddict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was raining the day Demeter left her kitten for good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Naming of Orphans

**Author's Note:**

> The implied non-con is NOT between Demeter and Munkustrap.

It was raining the day Demeter left her kitten for good.

It seemed like it had been raining every day since the Ball, but maybe that was just the imagination of the Rum Tum Tugger. Certainly there were more puddles than usual, at least, leaving his paws and whiskers wet no matter which way he went when he tried to avoid them. If he walked too much on rooftops he’d have to cross an overflowing gutter eventually, and there weren’t any convenient rooftops around his humans’ home, anyway, all of them too slanted, too slick in the deluge. Rooftops too often gave him nausea, as well (except when he was on the ground, wondering what it would be like to fly).

He was out and about, minding his own business as best he could. Today’s rain was a more misty sort of thing, the kind of rain you practically didn’t notice until you went home and found yourself wet to the skin with little dew-drops of water. The sky was a very dark gray, clouds pregnant with the more pelting kind of rain, the one that stung and slapped as it came down. Tugger wasn’t sure if he wanted to head back just yet. Every time he made to turn around he thought of all the adventures he might miss if the rain didn’t come, if he delayed for an hour instead of going home right now, or else he spied some bright object falling out of a human’s pocket, or saw a flock of birds wheeling about in the gray gray sky. Just a moment more...maybe he’d find a pretty queen who would enjoy his company, or make it all the way to the fish market and see if anything there delighted his senses.

So many things to do, so little time.

He had wandered into one of the parks—Green Park, if he had to guess, not too far from St. James—maybe he could bother Bustopher Jones—and stopped to inhale the smells of growing things. Wet leaves, earth, worms. And below that, carried on the faintest of breezes…something familiar, something on the tip of his tongue—

Cat! Demeter!

For a moment he forgot all about her disastrous Ball, only a few months ago, and remembered only how they had played as kittens—attended their first Ball together, ears still opening, eyes too weak to see anything of significance, danced at their second while their older brother and sister had their moment to shine. He remembered hearing he was the one picked for her at her Ball, and how they’d laughed at that. “I think Munk and I got the wrong sisters,” he’d teased, and she’d batted at his nose, claws retracted. Before he realized quite where he was going he was there, only a few feet away, ducking under a bush to cross to her.

Something made him pause under the hedge, leaves scraping against his damp fur. Demeter had had a litter, he’d heard, after the Ball, but everyone knew mothers weren’t supposed to be out with their litter so early. And so far from home, too—Tugger could’ve sworn she lived by Russell Square. Perhaps she’d gotten Jellylorum or Jennyanydots to watch her litter, and gone for a stroll? Her back was turned to him, golden tail flicking.

He ducked further under the bush when he heard a small mewling. That couldn’t have come from Demeter; it was too high-pitched. Yet it had come from her direction all the same.

“Hush,” Demeter said, “Hush.”

The mewling continued, grew into a howling. “Mummy! Mummy!”

“Mummy’s got to go.” Demeter sounded frantic. She was backing away carefully, stopping a few moments every now and then. “Mummy’s got to go, but you’ll be alright—you’ll be warm and you know how to find food. Mummy’s got to go now!”

Rum Tum Tugger stepped out from under the bush, padding carefully across the muddy ground. “Demeter,” he called.

The young queen whipped around, eyes wide. Behind her he could make out a small soggy cardboard box. The mewling was still coming from inside, growing weaker and weaker each moment. Demeter didn’t say anything when he approached, only watching him watch the box come closer with every step.

He hissed at what he found. The kitten couldn’t have been more than four weeks old, small and black, with white paws that batted feebly at the ratty blanket he was bundled in. “You’re abandoning a kitten so young?” he demanded, suddenly indignant.

“Older than your mother abandoned that monster,” she snarled at his back. “I nursed him. I weaned him. Maybe too early, but I tried.”

Tugger couldn’t help but flinch at the mention of his younger brother in such a tone of disgust, but he also couldn’t deny the truth in her words. Macavity had committed the worst of the sins, in the middle of the Ball, too. Tugger had _seen_ —he’d stumbled upon them just as Macavity was going to—he’d run to Demeter, shouting for help, but it had been so short, nothing like the Ball, and by the time he’d gotten to them, leaping on his brother’s back, trying to pull him off—he’d been too late. They all had, the rest of the tribe clambering up over the junk more slowly. Skimbleshanks, of all cats, had been the first to arrive, and he was limber for nine years, but the younger cats should have come first.

That was the thought that haunted Tugger the most. Where had the younger cats been? Where had Munkustrap been, where was Bustopher? Neither of them had known until they brought Demeter back to the center of the junkyard, shaking between her father and her sister, Tugger trailing behind uselessly with Bombalurina’s foreign friend Cassandra and the confused kittens.

Demeter had the right to call his brother a monster. Maybe Macavity _was_ a monster, warped by the lack of their mother’s milk, her soft underbelly, her gentle care that he and Munk had had, but not Macavity.

“Were there others?” he asked softly. Most litters held more than one kitten, especially with younger queens. For her first, this one would be very small.

“Dead,” Demeter replied lowly. “All of them.”

Tugger didn’t ask how they died. The first litter could easily go badly; that’s why they were often larger rather than small. Instead, he said, “Do you want this one to join them?”

Demeter’s face twisted into agony. “I can’t raise him! He’s like—he’s like _him!_ I turn away for a second and I find him floating above the bed! If he didn’t have _his_ powers maybe I could have fooled myself….” She stopped, overcome.

Tugger looked down at the kitten, struggling less and less in the bundle of blankets. “You could have pretended he was mine?” he guessed. They’d gone through with the official ceremony afterwards, but in private and after the rest of the tribe had had their fun. Gus had been regaling the cats with a reenactment of Firefrorefiddle, which was always fun; Tugger doubted they’d been seen while sneaking away, though when they returned Munk and Jennyanydots, at least, had caught sight of them creeping back into the light. Tugger’s face had burned with shame, though he couldn’t reason why.

Demeter nodded, face downturned. “I told Bombalurina. She’s been yowling about it to any cat who would listen since I started showing. Most of them came out dark and yellow—there was only one ginger. I could have believed they were all yours….”

An idea was starting to dawn on Tugger—an impulsive, too-big, awful idea, twice the size of the summer sun and thrice as hot. “Maybe he is mine,” he said, half in a trance.

Demeter looked up at him, eyes narrowing, whiskers twitching. “I told you, he’s got powers—“

“And my mother and my father didn’t have powers, but my brother did,” he pointed out, the idea growing brighter, the whole sky filled with yellow light. “Perhaps it skipped me and I passed it to my son.”

“He is not your son, Tugger,” Demeter said sharply.

“But he could be,” Tugger replied. He stood up, full of energy, and started pacing back and forth on a small patch of less-wet ground. “You and I are fairly certain he isn’t mine, but what’s to say the others need to know that? He looks enough like me that the rest of the tribe could be fooled. No one needs to know the truth, and you won’t have to abandon him!”

“But I’ll still know the truth!” she yowled at him. “I’ll always know!”

“That’s why I’ll raise him.”

The words were out before he could think, but even as they seemed to hang between them, like a bird appearing out of thin air, Tugger somehow wasn’t surprised. They had been brewing in him since this idea began.

His humans liked kittens, and this kitten was his nephew. Demeter couldn’t raise him; Macavity, he didn’t trust; one of the queens would ask so many questions about why she couldn’t do it herself. A tom raising his kittens without the queen wasn’t unheard of—Skimbleshanks had had to raise his daughters almost entirely by himself after their mother had that awful accident. (Though since Bombalurina’s Ball had been only days away, he hadn’t had much raising to do.)

Yes, Tugger could do this, if only he could commit to it.

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

“Tugger, this isn’t one of your games. You can’t be all for raising him one moment and then decide it bores you the next.”

“I know.”

“You’re certain you can do this?”

Tugger took a deep breath. “Yes. As sure as I can be, I swear on the grave of Queen Victoria.”

Demeter gave him a shrewd look, as if measuring him up. Then she sighed. “Go ahead then. Take care of him.” She turned to walk away.

Tugger looked down on the small kitten, patted at him with a paw. The little thing blinked open its weak eyes at him. “Mummy?”

“What’s his name?” Tugger called after Demeter.

“I didn’t give him one!” She ducked out of sight.

Tugger turned back to the little ball of fluff. He had a white face, and a white triangle of fur on his chest. “Your mummy has to go,” he said, “but I’ll take care of you now.”

He picked up the shivering thing by the scruff of the neck, considering how to best get back home before the poor thing froze or starved or something worse.

“Mummy?” the kitten asked again.

Tugger almost shook his head, but remembered that was a bad idea just in time. Casting about with his eyes, he saw through the sparse tree branches a sign. “Green Park Station”. Of course! He trotted off towards the underground line, ignoring the voice in the back of his head that said he’d much rather try and catch a cab.

Two stops on the Jubilee line, heading to Baker Street, with the kitten curled up on Tugger’s paws. “Mummy?” he asked one more time, weakly.

“I’m your Uncle Tugger,” he said, deciding that the kitten could know the truth, at least. “I’m going to take good care of you.”

Off at Baker Street, the kitten in his mouth once more, and on the Bakerloo. Three stops, again with the kitten curling up as close as he could to Tugger, away from the cold floor. Tugger breathed hot breaths on him, hoping it’d be enough until they got home.

Off at Warwick Avenue, carrying a whimpering kitten in his mouth. Tugger ran down Clifton Gardens, ignoring his nephew’s little whimpers as the journey jounced him with an effort. A right on Randolf Avenue, then a left onto Elizabeth shortly after. Tugger leapt up the three steps to his house and pushed through the cat-flap just as the kitten let out an impressive wail. Outside the skies opened up, a flash of lightning chasing Tugger through the flap.

“Tugger? Is that you?” called the human queen from somewhere upstairs in her human language, just as her mate shouted from the den, “What on earth is that cat doing now?”

Tugger carried the still-wailing kitten in through the kitchen door, to where his bed was, right by the heater (as he sometimes liked it). He dropped the thing in the bed, grabbed a blanket with his paws, threw it over his still-screaming nephew. Thunder rumbled, answering the earlier lighting. He jumped onto the counter, rifling for a can of tuna. That was soft, wasn’t it? Good for a kitten, he thought.

The younger human kit came in to see him pull the metal can out of hiding behind the dry breakfast stuff the kittens would sometimes try to bribe him with. (He only liked it when he could steal it from their bowls.) “Tugger, do you want some tuna?” she asked.

His nephew had quieted a little, so the human kitten hadn’t noticed him yet. Tugger sat on the counter proper and gave his politest affirmative meow. Well-trained, the human kitten grabbed the device that opened the cans, peeling open the container in an instant and placing it before him. Tugger batted it off the counter with a paw.

“Tugger, I just opened that!” complained the human, which was fair, but Tugger had jumped to the floor after it, and was pushing the can with his nose to his bed…and his nephew. “Mum! Dad! Come quick! Tugger’s being strange!”

“When isn’t that cat being strange?” called the human tom, but he was coming nonetheless.

Tugger carefully lifted the can of tuna into the bed, then jumped in after it, mindful of the lumps. He felt for his nephew with his paws and pulled the squealing kitten out from under the blanket, tucking him against his side just as another flash flooded the windows. Then he took out a little of the tuna from the can and offered it to his nephew on one paw.

The humans gasped above him. The tom ran to the kitchen door and shouted, “Molly! Come down here at once! It’s the cat!”

“What is it, dear?” asked his mate.

Tugger paid them no mind, watching his nephew sniff the tuna and recoil into himself when the thunderclap came. After the sound had faded, he finally opened his little mouth, showing off a set of tiny baby teeth poking out of gums and a bright pink tongue. He nibbled a little at the tuna, then dove into it with the gusto of the starved. Tugger winced at the feeling of teeth on the underside of his paw and had to concentrate on keeping his claws retracted. When the kitten was finished with that pawful he dipped his foot back into the tuna, and Demeter’s son pounced on it once more. When he was finished, he gave a great yawn and curled closer into Tugger’s side, falling asleep.

Tugger looked up at the humans again. All four of them were there, looking wide-eyed at the little bundle of black-and-white snuggled close to Tugger’s side. The younger kitten had fallen to her knees, and was holding out her hand cautiously, as if asking permission. Tugger dipped his head slightly, watched her stroke his nephew’ fur a few times. When he felt it had been enough he growled a little, and the human immediately switched to scratching at Tugger’s own sweet spot before drawing away again.

“Can we keep him?” she asked. The rain pounded on the roof above. There was another flash of lightning and a quick thunderclap that made the kitten stir and the humans wince.

“I don’t know if we can,” said the father when the humans and the kitten had settled back down.

Tugger hissed at the tom, but softly, so as to not disturb his sleeping nephew. The human queen laughed. “Tugger disagrees with you, I’m afraid.”

“But Molly—“

“What if we took him to the vet tomorrow?” the older human kitten asked. “If he’s sick we can give him to one of those animal shelters, but if he’s okay we keep him.”

“That’s a lovely idea, Peter,” his mother said, squeezing his shoulder. Tugger purred a little and settled down to a nap himself, since he always slept best with a thunderstorm. The human queen was on his side already; her mate would cave soon enough.

Just as he was drifting off, he heard the tom say, “But what on earth will we call him?”

“We can call him Quaxo!” cried the younger kitten.

 _You can call him Quaxo_ , Tugger agreed in his mind, _but he’ll need a name that’s all his own. Perhaps…Mistoffelees….Yes, that’s a name to be proud of…._

And on the roof the rain pounded, and the lightning and thunder fought in the sky, but in the little cat bed in the snug house in London, all was well.

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes on the relationships (because nothing is canon in the Cats universe and everyone sort of makes things up as they go) and the Jellicle Ball:  
> 1\. Munkustrap, Rum Tum Tugger, and Macavity are all the sons of Grizabella and Old Deuteronomy.  
> 2\. Demeter Bombalurina are the daughters of Skimbleshanks.  
> 3\. The Jellicle Ball involves one female kitten becoming a full cat by losing her virginity to a male cat. In Demeter's case, her friend Rum Tum Tugger was supposed to have that opportunity, but didn't because Macavity..."intervened".  
> 4\. In some productions, Mr. Mistoffelees is referred to as Quaxo before his song. I'm assuming Quaxo is his "everyday" name for fic purposes.


End file.
